The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

This is the most boring question in British political blogging. Usually all sides answer "yes", but say it is biased against them. The BBC's defenders regard this as evidence that the correct answer is "no". With apologies, I must ask it again.

Internet radio allows Mrs Paine to listen to the "Today" programme in Moscow. I am on holiday today and could listen with her. One of the three top stories was that social mobility in Britain "may" have improved under Labour. The source for this story is a "study" published by the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, which cites selected academic sources. This is not exactly what I would call "research." The BBC did. When research is commissioned (let alone published) by an interested party, the BBC's response usually ranges from sceptical to dismissive. Not this time. Over and again, the story was pitched as good news.

I don't believe it. To the best of my knowledge, in the last 30 years, my escape from my origins has not been repeated by any other pupil from the crap comprehensive I attended. Those doors have slammed shut. Had I been born just two years later, being an intelligent and ambitious chap born in the wrong place, I would now be a gangster, a government employee or a Labour Party official (if you will forgive the tautology).

Don't rely however on my anecdotal evidence. Only last month, the OECD published a report which said, inter alia, that Britain is one of the worst developed countries in the world for social mobility. The BBC made little of this. Try googling that story, and you will find mainly obscure, low-traffic, news sites reporting it.  Nor has my belief been disputed, until now, by the Government. Indeed the Prime Minister made it clear he shared my view only a few months ago, but chose to blame the situation on Margaret Thatcher.

Reading around this "story", it emerges that the sole criterion used by the authors of the "study" in measuring social mobility was the relationship between the number of GCSEs passed by teenagers and their families' income. The fact that only one measure was applied suggests to me that this was the only one on which an improvement could be shown. The fact that it relates to a much devalued qualification may explain why the methodology of the "study" is little mentioned. I suspect that if the measure was "grade inflation adjusted", the outcome would be different.

Apart from blatant BBC bias, I draw two other inferences. Firstly, with Alistair Campbell back in the saddle, New Labour has resumed the only war they have had any success in fighting; The War on Truth. The OECD report was likely to be much-cited in a General Election campaign as evidence that Labour has failed in a  key political objective. General Campbell has deftly ensured a swathe of counter-factual headlines today and ensured that Labour activists googling the topic during an election will find plenty of fresh ammunition from friendly media sources. Secondly, Labour – buoyed up in opinion polls by the Conservatives' ill-judged support of Brown's massive overeaction to the banking crisis (throwing more taxpayers' money at it in absolute terms than even the Fed threw in America) – is planning a surprise election.

Conservative ineptitude may again have left us with no hope but the IMF to preserve us from more socialism. When Labour was at its lowest, I told my then opposite number – the leader of my University's Labour Club – that his party was betraying the country by not providing an effective opposition to Margaret Thatcher's government. "Democracy doesn't work without effective opposition", I told him. Thirty years on, the tables have turned.